I somehow managed to escape from adolescence with very few Joni Mitchell records (or, well, I had a few and lost them) so maybe I’ll keep an eye out for the ones that don’t cost one million dollars. I wasn’t a big fan as a young kid—there was something too alien about her, too confusing for me—or maybe too woman-oriented, and I couldn’t relate. I sure couldn’t figure out what she was playing on guitar, for the most part. But now that I’m nearly an adult, I’m increasingly up for challenges. This 1970 record has the two songs from that “Superstars of the Seventies” collection (“Big Yellow Taxi” and “Woodstock”) which were, for a couple of years, my sense of Joni Mitchell. I like this album cover a lot, credited to “Joni”—so guess it’s a self-portrait, a simple line drawing—looking half-done, but it couldn’t be anyone but her. Then a very small section (about the size and shape of a slice of pizza) is filled in with simple but vibrant watercolors. Not much there, but it feels entirely specific, like you could find the place (or could have in 1970) from the very minimal clues—you get the feeling of the hills of Los Angeles, some modest houses (affordable at the time?) maybe hippies and artists there. There’s a blue VW bug parked in a garage—it could be the most minimal representation of the “Bug,” ever.
Six songs per side, and the cover opens up and there are lyrics there, either handwritten incredibly small by Joni Mitchell—or else it’s a font—called “Induced Migraine.” You can pretty much understand the words anyway, but I’m thinking this is a record I want to pay close attention to the words, and so that’s what I’m doing. I’ll have to listen through a few times because there are some evocative ones—references to places, geography—which reminds me of how the most significant seeming feature of my dreams is the geography. I always talk about this when I talk about dreams. So that makes me think that maybe these songs are somewhat dreamlike… and they are. Like most songs, a lot about relationships, family, friends, and I guess, are mostly, are to some degree, romantic. Of course, “Big Yellow Taxi” is one of the more happy-go-lucky-sounding angry environmentalist songs you’ll ever hear. It’s a good approach. “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot”—you can’t say it much better than that. That observation is never dated, and never will be until humans are cured of that insanity (parking lots) which isn’t likely to happen anytime sooner than the Earth is cured of that insanity (people). “Woodstock” always creeped me out a little, in that its words are celebratory, but it sounds (acid) trippy and a bit scary—not celebratory as much as a lament for the end of human life on Earth. Could this song’s approach be a conscious effort to represent both the good and bad acid, simultaneously? Or else, maybe, the “yin and yang” of acid—is that a thing? I might be completely off base here, of course, since I’m not an acid guy. I’m not even a baseball guy.
The record starts off with “Morning Morgantown,” which has a catchiness of such devious capacity that they named an earworm after it (Morning Morgantown Earworm). It gets in there and doesn’t let up. Does anyone else wake up in the middle of the night to pee—and then after you pee and you’re going back to bed (and hopefully sleep) you realize there is a song going over and over in your head? It happens to me all the time—not necessarily earworm songs, either—but maybe not everyone is susceptible to this kind of thing. Anyway, the only way to alleviate the Morgantown is listen to the lyrics and try to figure out what it’s about. (West Virginia, or a state of mind? Or both?) I doubt if I can find anywhere, like on the internet, people discussing Joni Mitchell lyrics. (That’s one of my jokes, the kind people don’t seem to get, like when I said I had “around 150” photos on my phone!) “For Free” is a particularly lovely one, and I relate like it’s yesterday (with the clarinetist, not the singer—but the singer, too—that’s a magic trick). Lana Del Rey recorded this, on one of her albums—with two other singers, trading verses, which is an inspired approach. It seems like most of the songs are portrait songs, her poetic observations of people, with warmth, and with a certain knowing and unknowable depth. This one, “The Arrangement” is a copious lament to a “you”—that I might find it worthwhile to ask around about. “Rainy Night House” is equally as mysterious—and disturbing— but in a way I can’t exactly nail down.
I’m reading half-a-dozen books about musicians, currently—I guess I like books about musicians—but a little here and a little there (i.e., I read slowly). Is there good writing, somewhere, about Joni Mitchell—a book, or many books? Obviously, there is, but how can one choose? Can I trust the inter-nest to tell me? Perhaps that will be my next project, as another Farraginous February wraps in glorious song and silence. It’ll be spring all too soon. Yesterday I walked along the river at noon, alone (people still avoiding that treacherous boardwalk?) and it struck me as particularly beautiful, the place where the upriver ice ended and then it was just water, at the confluence. (Not the sex-toy company, but the place where the rivers meet.) There was an alone duck swimming, or floating—but moving fast. Then I saw an alone gull, sitting on the very edge of the ice, at the edge of the water. Just one. Anytime I see a totally solitary bird I wonder what’s up. Should I worry? Probably not. Probably just out there listening to music, making tentative plans.
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